Facebook beats Google for first time

SAN FRANCISCO — Social-networking star Facebook surpassed Google tobecome the most visited website in the United States for the firsttime last week, industry analysts showed.

Facebook's homepage finished the week ending March 13 as the mostvisited site in the country, according to industry tracker Hitwise.

The "important milestone," as described by Hitwise director ofresearch Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185percent increase in visits in the same period, compared to the sameweek in 2009.

By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.com increased onlynine percent in the same time -- although the tracker does not includeGoogle property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTubeand Google Maps.

Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebookand the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networkingfeature Buzz to its Gmail service.

In what could signal an escalating battle between Facebook and Google,the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthdayearlier this year with changes including a new message inbox thatechoes Gmail's format.

Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 millionunique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.